British DUers: Can you enlighten me re: Labour/Liberal differences?

[Arugula Latte]

I don't have a good grasp on what makes these parties different and similar. Could someone give me a quick summary? Thanks! :hi:

[FlashHarry]

1. Basically, (new) Labour is center-left and Liberal is left

Or is that centre-left? It's been a while since I lived in the UK. I'll have to ask my dad. He's voted Labour and Liberal over the years. Are the Liberals the heirs apparent to the trade-unionists of the 60s and 70s?

[69KV]

2. I thought it was the opposite

The Liberal Party in the UK is liberal in the European sense, meaning socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Sort of a libertarian-lite party.

Labour was originally socialist but these days under Blair they are "neoliberal". To somebody like me looking from across the pond, it's hard to tell any substantial difference between Blair's Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the Tories anymore. The Liberal Party is probably a little to the left of Labour on social issues, and Labour a little to the left of the Liberals on economic issues. But that's about it.

Labour does still have a socialist wing of the party, and many of them want to get rid of Blair for kowtowing to the Shrub's foreign policy, but they don't control the party right now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. 20 years ago, you would say fiscally Liberals are central, Labour left

(Just to clear up one thing; the 3rd party in British politics is called the Liberal Democrats, formed, about 15 years ago, from a merger of the old Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Paarty. A few diehard Liberals did not mrge, and still call themselves 'the Liberal Party'. They are tiny, so I presume we are talking about the Lib Dems).

These days, the Labour leadership has moved to the right (abolished the old Labour 'Clause 4' from its constitution, which called for the nationalization of industry and commerce; keen supporters of the Private Finance Initiative, where private firms build and maintain schools and hospitals, and rent them to the government; massive increase in tuition fees at universities); while the Lib Dems roughly stayed where they were, which now makes them look a bit left wing (they want an extra level of income tax, at 50%, for those earning above £100,000, and a local income tax to replace the not-so-progressive property-based tax).

Socially the Lib Dems are more liberal than Labour (they tend to be more liberal on drugs; a few of them even contemplate the abolition of the monarchy, though this is a non-starter in England).

The Lib Dems opposed the Iraq war (thoug hdo not advocate an immediate pull-out now).

Yes, Labour still has some socialists in it; none look at all likely to ever get let into the controlling section of the party.

[FlashHarry]

5. Lib Dems. That's it!

Sorry, not Liberal.

[69KV]

6. Okay thanks for clearing that up

Liberal Democrats, got it!

[Anarcho-Socialist]

4. Gravitational shift of the Labour Party

When Tony Blair took over the Labour Party in 1994, he took it from being generally left-wing in the democratic socialist sense; and by 1997 he took it to a left-wing European social democratic position.

He also rebranded the Labour Party as "New Labour". Old party socialists became known as "Old Labour" and the members of the new social democratic wing became known as "Blairites".

From 2001 onwards, Blair then took the party to the centre of the UK spectrum, even to the right of his own "Blairite" supporters. The party's position and policies became reminiscent of the US Liberals of the 1960s before the peace movement started to influence it.

Blair's position is not unlike that of LBJ: wealth redistrubition via incentives to work, social justice mixed with higher military spending and military interventions abroad.